EPISODE 4 - Kent Ostermeier: Partner of Prospan + Fabtech

In Episode 4 we talk to our friend Kent Ostermeier - Partner at Prospan and Fabtech Design & Build. 

Over the past 20-plus years, Kent has helped grow two respected Fraser Valley companies while working alongside builders, contractors, and business leaders across the region. What he has accomplished is incredible, and we hope you enjoy listening to our conversation with him as much as we enjoyed having it! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What's a hidden talent if you'll annoy you? Uh I can lick my elbow.

SPEAKER_00 0:06

We won't make him do it. I'm gonna try that later.

SPEAKER_03 0:10

Welcome to the No Two Roads podcast. Brent Rook. Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of No Two Roads. This is Brett Rook. My name is Darren Leffords. We run a run a real estate company here in uh Fraser Valley. But the main part about this No Two Roads is that we're trying to learn from other business owners, see their growth in business, and yeah, uh have a conversation with them.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

So today, this is episode number four. Uh we have another guest with us. We're very excited to have them. Um last one was with uh Neil, who's also my dad, and uh a boomer who started a company from scratch um in roofing. And today we're going a lot different, uh, but also in the construction side of things. So um we are gonna welcome uh this individual who started as a sales in sales for a lumberyard and since then has been a bit of a visionary and a CEO and owner, now owns multiple businesses, uh, around 40 employees, and uh we're very happy to have him. Welcome to the show, Kent Oxtermeyer.

SPEAKER_03 1:21

Thanks, guys. Thank you, Kent. We've got to see kind of the growth of the real estate side with Kent along the way, so we've gotten to know him. Kent's a go-getter. That's what I appreciate about Kent.

SPEAKER_04 1:32

Is that fair? Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. Um, to a fault, maybe. Uh actually, my wife said that to me the other day. She said, your ADHD is is great, but it also can be a uh um a negative as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:43

And I'm like, I think I'm learning that. So I feel like what you're really good at is laying out what needs to be done and pulling the trigger on it. Yeah, right? Like you're not you don't pull a trigger without doing the homework, you do your homework, but then you're not afraid to pull the trigger. So that's not my appreciation.

SPEAKER_04 1:58

There's some naivety behind that as well. You just go in and and just hope for the best. But honestly, I think um a big message is for me is like the people around you help you so much, and we have we have a really good team.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

Yeah, having a team, you know, not being shy to make a decision, right? I can be in the same boat where you just you can be stuck, they call it what they call it analysis paralysis. Maybe not so much you. You're like, this makes sense, let's go. Yeah, there's another thing we have in common. Got a whole lot of girls. You want to talk to the family at all?

SPEAKER_04 2:27

Yeah, I got four girls. Uh oldest is 11, um, youngest is five. So yeah, it's been uh busy 11 years. Um, love it. I love being a girl dad. Um, yeah, there's um there's a ton of joy that those girls bring, and uh yeah, we we have a good family situation.

SPEAKER_02 2:44

So yeah, and dads get a lot of love, eh? Like they look to mom for the example. We just gotta show them some love, and yeah, for most of you guys know, but I got three daughters as well myself, really similar age to Kent. So yeah, it's kind of a unique thing for us.

SPEAKER_04 2:56

Two of our daughters hang out quite often, I think.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

So yeah, pretty awesome. Yeah, fellow Yarrowites. Yeah, that's right. Shout out to Yarrow. Yeah, way back.

SPEAKER_03 3:06

Kent won't move out of Yarrow, went from Yarrow to Yarrow to Yarrow, I think. So yeah, there you go. Yeah, it's a lovely little town. It's awesome. Yeah, yeah. Maybe you're missing out, Darren. It's probably fair.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_03 3:17

So let's let's go back to when Kent first started working. What what were some of the first jobs that you had? And what would you say you learned from from some of those first jobs?

SPEAKER_04 3:27

Yeah, so that's good, that's going way back. So just I in high school, out of high school, was in mechanics, um, worked at a company, JobRate Automotive. Um, it was a wrecking yard. I don't think it's around anymore, but we basically bought old trucks, pulled all the parts off them, mostly Ford trucks, and and sold the parts. And then at the same time, there was a service side of it. Yeah, um, I loved pulling the old trucks apart. I was very good at that. I hated putting it back together. I sucked at that. Um, so yeah, the parts and organizing it and and talking to people on the phone, that was my that was the joy I got of the job, but the rest of it, I that wasn't me.

SPEAKER_02 4:04

How old were you?

SPEAKER_04 4:05

Yeah, this was right out of high school. Okay, 18, 19, 20. Yeah, so a few years doing that? A few years, two, two and a half years. Uh, I think I spent six months um like full-time work after high school. Yeah, and then I and I was working with my brother. Um, we had a decent relationship, but I think it was I was ready to kind of go on my own. So I started working for a company, ITB, Intercontinental Truck Body, and I became their purchaser there. So I got more into the other side of being customer service related and purchasing, talking to people, um, and uh pricing things up.

SPEAKER_03 4:37

So yeah. You mentioned that you enjoyed taking things apart, not putting back together. And you you mentioned joy there. I I want to ask this later on, like the things where you feel in your business you find joy and where there's frustration. We'll save that for later.

SPEAKER_05 4:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 4:50

But I like that you bring that up because I've noticed that just in our business and in life, you have those things, the joyful things bring you energy, right? You get excited about doing them, but then there's some things that are frustrating that kind of drains the energy.

SPEAKER_04 5:00

Yeah. So yeah, and right off the bat, I'll answer that question. I mean, I'm I'm not a maintainer, I'll start something and I'll I'll need people around me to help maintain it. So you go.

SPEAKER_03 5:09

Yeah. Interesting. So you're yeah, that goes back to the visionary. You're like, I'm gonna come up with this, I'm gonna have the ideas, I'm gonna help you put them in place, but I need somebody else to carry it from there. Exactly. Is that fair? Yeah, very fair.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

Yeah, putting things back together takes too long, right?

SPEAKER_03 5:26

Yeah, it's not my skill set.

SPEAKER_04 5:27

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:28

So right away, I'm like, that's interesting how you notice that even in your first job, and how that relates to what you're doing now, right?

SPEAKER_04 5:34

So yeah, so then ITB from ITB you moved to uh I bounced around a lot like in those early 1920, 21 years. Like I was framing for a while, um, and then I went into um architectural design. I actually went to school BCIT for a while. Yeah, I got into a job doing EWP floor layouts, and then I went back to framing because I was too young and I wanted to get away from the computer and you know, exercise and all those things. So bounced back and forth, back and forth, and then I was framing for a guy, Al Weinhorst. Um, and um, and that's where that's where I I figured, hey, I'm I this is fun, but I gotta I want to do something more. I wanna I want to get it more into the business side of things and sales. Yeah, so um at some point in there I actually decided I wanted to be a realtor. I'm not sure if you guys knew this. Did not know that. No, okay. So I went to school for real estate, and uh I did the course and I did everything and I was gonna partner with somebody and uh and I failed the test. I didn't pass the real estate test. And as I I was gonna redo the test, right? I think if you fail, you can do it again. Yep. And during that time, Al Lionhorst said, Hey, my dad is looking for a salesman um in the lumber world, which is West Central Belly Spies. So I was like, Wait, that sounds way better. I was just getting married, my wife was nervous about being married to realtor, working in the evenings, all those things. I'm like, yeah, that sounds good. I I I'll try that. So that's how I got into the being worried. Yeah, I mean, you guys tell me, right? You guys are in real estate, but but but the partnership, like that was my goal, right? That was how I eased my wife's like like nerves. I was like, I was gonna have a partner, yeah. And they you know, I have one evening off, and then the next day I work, and that was how I sold it to my wife, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

So it definitely was that uh, I mean, we we wouldn't do this business without having a partner, so that's a big part of it. Yeah, but yeah, the first couple years she would have been bang on, like we were in the thick of it before we built a team and the systems and all that. It's just there's nothing to do except work at night. Much like probably when you started a business, anyways, you're just going all the time, anyways. It's not not say it's too different that that way, but I did not know that you went all the way to write the team.

SPEAKER_03 7:40

No, I still have the books, and I I feel like I remember you telling me this. Like, I think I totally forgot about it, but as you're saying, I'm like, your brother-in-law is a realtor. Yeah, I'm like, I'm sure you had a lot of those conversations, and there's like, no, just not for me.

SPEAKER_04 7:51

Yeah, but same thing, it's like like everybody needs a house, right? And and like it's a huge investment. And I I thought it would be cool to be part of that journey. I thought that would be really neat. So for the most part, it is awesome, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:02

Yeah, but like what you're saying, why you wanted to do it, what it was to like serve people and be the solution, right? Yeah, so similar to what you're doing now, you are trying to still find the solution in your businesses, right? That's why we enjoy it, yeah. Is finding that solution for people and yeah, coming up with working alongside them.

SPEAKER_04 8:19

So totally, and then the self-employed part of it, right? And it was like, okay, you can kind of do your own thing, work as hard as you want um on your own. And then if you want to pull back a little bit, you can do that and you're yeah, you have that freedom.

SPEAKER_03 8:31

So was when you were framing at that time, was it also like, hey, I don't want to be working for somebody the rest of my life. I do want to get somewhere where I'll I work for myself or have people working for me.

SPEAKER_04 8:41

Uh not really. Actually, I I never grew up being like, Oh, I want to start a business, I want to do this. Yeah, it just it just happened, honestly, when I was working at West Central. Um, so things kind of snowballed. And my my boss there, Casey, um, basically told me, he said, Kent, you're your own lumber yard in yourself. So you're a lumber salesman, but he says, You do whatever you want, you can sell whatever you want, you can sell hats if you want, like you can buy a hat and sell it if you want. Like he's like, do whatever you want and act like it's your own business. Put as much time as you want in it because it was commission-based. Yeah, and I just love that. I was like, okay, like same thing I said earlier. The harder I work, the more I get paid. That's awesome. Yeah, that's sounds like you had a lot of freedom. He did, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 9:22

And I think that's trading your hours for the check, right? It's just like it's more motivating to be like, well, if I do this more efficiently, if I do this smarter, if I sell something else by yeah, then you see the instant reward. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:34

So did you see was there growing pains in that? Like, did I think there's a difference of like the sales in uh a current book of business or going out and getting a book of business? Yeah, where did you find your skills in that sense?

SPEAKER_04 9:49

Going out and getting a book of business. Yeah, yeah. Same thing. Um, maintaining wasn't my thing. Um I just I just yeah, and it took a lot. Like it took the first year, it was like banging your head up against the wall, door knocking, trying to get in with people, and then you know, the whole networking thing. Once you know a few, then they start to, but it took six to nine months to get some real good customers.

SPEAKER_02 10:09

Well, they don't trust you right away. The builders don't know who you are, probably. Yeah, were you just driving by us like half-built houses, new construction, or like what yeah?

SPEAKER_04 10:17

Back in the day, it was going to the city hall and they had like a binder, and you'd just go check all the permits and go to that address, and hopefully the builder's there. Maybe the framer, the framers was a very good piece of advertising. Yeah, and then they give you their number and you call them, and hey, you want to buy some lumber? Right, and just lots of cool calling.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

Is that still happening with lumber sales guys?

SPEAKER_04 10:38

Uh, I think so. I think it's changed a lot, it's all digital, right? And um, but like right now in the market we're in, I think um you start building a house, you're gonna get four or five lumber sales guys calling you and saying, Hey, um, you you know, I can I price out your job? And right, so it's it's just different. It's a tar tougher market right now, and that information is so easy, right?

SPEAKER_02 10:59

I can pull up Darren's building a house, I can pull that up in seconds and call you and see instead of having to drive to the city, it was so it's easier to get the info, so there's more competition getting the info.

SPEAKER_04 11:10

Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:11

How did you how did you stand out as a sales guy when you made those approaches? So I'm building a house and I'm the framer or whatever, and you're walking up like how did you sell yourself and your product?

SPEAKER_04 11:24

Uh yeah, good question. I think I think it was just just being willing to like do whatever it takes to make sure that customer's happy, right? Like uh my framing experience, even though it was a very small time and I wasn't a great framer, I understood how important it was for guys to have material on site like at the right time, right? A truck shows up there, it's supposed to be there at seven, it shows up at eight. We've got four framers sitting there doing nothing waiting for the lumber, right? So just being able to say to them, hey, I know your paying, and I'm gonna do whatever it takes to get your material. I think that helped a lot. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:57

And that's probably still true today, right?

SPEAKER_04 12:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:02

Have most lumber sales guys been framers, or even that little frames you had to maybe set you apart?

SPEAKER_04 12:07

I think so. I think if you look at a lot of the West Central guys, they you know, ex framers know how to do a proper lumber takeout, that kind of thing. So I think so.

SPEAKER_03 12:16

And was that single family you were normally going to or multi as well? No, it was all single family at that time.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Yeah. So, okay, so this journey, I'm kind of piecing it together as Darren's environment questions, but you were like it started at cars and then you went to ITB, but then there was some BCIT in there and some real estate in there. What was actually the order of events there? Like were you? Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:41

Like I said, I went framing two or three times, right? So I went to BCIT, got a job in design, and then went back to framing. Um ITB. Like I said, I bounced around, but it was framing, no, automotive, ITB, framing, school, framing, and then a job in design. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:09

So really, you didn't really set your path. It was like bouncing around trying to learn in all these things what what you enjoyed, what you were good at.

SPEAKER_05 13:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

So from cars to West Central, do you know roughly how long of a period that was? Like amidst all that trauma before you've gone to the city.

SPEAKER_04 13:25

Yeah, it was like it was like three years, two or three years.

SPEAKER_02 13:28

Okay, so it wasn't that long. No. So you're in your early 20s as a lumber sales guy.

SPEAKER_04 13:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:33

Okay, cool. Had you bought a house yet, or where were you living?

SPEAKER_04 13:38

I was I I bought a house when I was 22, and I was in Abbotsford, um, Westbury Abbots, where the first house was. And close to the free. You guys weren't the realtors at the time. I don't think you were even realtors, and it was 2015 or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 13:54

Yeah, I would have just been, but I also didn't really good. I was a bit of a secret agent when I first started. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 13:58

Um you guys weren't partners right from the beginning, were you?

SPEAKER_02 14:00

No, Darren was a realtor about six years before I was. Yeah. So he has got a but I do know Westbury was close to the freeway.

SPEAKER_04 14:06

Yeah, and I think that at that point I was, you know, I want to get into real estate. It's not getting any cheaper. Um, they're not making any more land. And so I I went out and I I took I actually I think I borrowed some money from my sister. Um, thank you, Stacy. Yeah, um, and then uh yeah, borrowed some money and took everything I had and threw it at this house, and then I had this house with nothing in it and had no money to to like furnish it or anything. But I had um like four or five buddies move in with me and they paid me rent, and slowly like that kind of helped me pay the mortgage. But it was it was it was tough.

SPEAKER_03 14:44

And you went straight to a single family home, yes, right, instead of going condo or townhouse. So you're like it's hard to do nowadays for a first-time homebuyer, yeah, but you being able to do that was great. Do you remember how much it was?

SPEAKER_04 14:55

I think it was like 300. It was like it was like I I remember telling the realtor, like, put the search on for the cheapest houses in all of Abbotsford with the most minnow land, like that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_03 15:05

Yeah, and it was it was I want dirt and I'll make the house work.

SPEAKER_04 15:08

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 15:09

That's yeah, yeah. I we still definitely do it for people sometimes where it's like I want an eight to ten thousand square foot lot, I don't care about the house, I can fix that up, but I don't want like a three thousand square foot lot. Yeah, like some I can add exactly and I can add work to like some elbow grease, right? Like what I can do. Yeah, so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

And you use you used well, it would have been. I'm trying to piece it together. Like you're I know you're just a couple years older than me, or so it would have probably been more like 2012, I'm thinking, or 11-ish, which may kind of make sense to the price, yeah, which was a great time. It jumped up after that.

SPEAKER_03 15:45

Great time took a couple years, but probably jumped up.

SPEAKER_04 15:47

Yeah, like I was super fortunate with the market. Um, and I went from there to a house in Elder Grove, and and I think the market uh in Elder Grove kind of stayed flat for a while, and I remember having a hard time selling that house. Yeah, but there was still some equity. I don't think so.

SPEAKER_03 16:02

There was a couple houses in, yeah. Then the first one in Yero. So yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Okay, yeah. And then uh, did you ever pay your sister back? Or was that?

SPEAKER_04 16:11

Yeah, I paid her back and I had to give her some royalty or whatever. That worked out good, but she was way better saver than I was, so yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

That's right. Even when I bought two around the same time, two years later, and you like I didn't have any money to do it. We talked about that briefly, and just you know, borrowed some money, yeah, and uh, but it ultimately got in, and then just getting in was a huge part of the real estate journey, right?

SPEAKER_04 16:30

Yeah, and of course, time is huge, right? Like, like I said, I was fortunate and the market went up, but like, yeah, there's other times where you have to be a bit more careful or or just be ready to ride it out.

SPEAKER_03 16:39

So one thing we tell people like first-time home buyers, it's if you can afford it, do it because you're young, the market's gonna go up. Yeah, don't listen to what if the mortgage broker or your bank says, hey, you're you can afford or sorry, we can get you approved for this much, and you still gotta look to be like, what's my lifestyle gonna be if I borrow that much? So it's always can you afford it with your lifestyle? Do it right.

SPEAKER_02 17:01

I should say just a quick, just a quick rant out based on even some conversations I had today. Like there are people that you know saved everything, took risks, and got in the market in the last few years, and they've actually gone backwards. I got a client selling a house right now that yeah, they've gone backwards, a couple of them. Um, you know, it if if everyone felt the market was bulletproof for so many years, and that's what it was. Now, for the first time, we have this pressure and this exposure to being down, you know, 15, 20, 25% if you bought within a certain window. So it's not always unbelievable, but still for the most part, in the long run, I think we all still believe it is, and those that can hold it on, hold on, weather the storm. Um, I think they're still gonna do really well. But anyway, I just thought I'd throw that out there because we bought at a really interesting time in those years. Yeah, cheap to get in and it only went up.

SPEAKER_03 17:50

And that goes to the like, if you can afford it, do it, right? The affordability is the big thing because you're gonna win in the long run, right? And you need a place to live. Like that's what you have, right? You need a place to live, and so do my buddies for them to pay me rent.

SPEAKER_04 18:02

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_03 18:03

So you're a salesman at uh West Central. When did you take that step into um a vision of a business?

SPEAKER_04 18:13

Yeah, so I think I think I was I was knocking on the the owner's um West Central owner's door saying, hey guys, like like I really want to get into the engineered wood business. Like like we're like we were just kind of we were buying from the competition, right? Which which worked pretty good for the single families, but when you get into the into the bigger multifamily jobs, it was it was tougher, right? And I think you don't have as much control.

SPEAKER_02 18:37

Yeah, can you explain a little bit more for like the general like yeah, engineered wood that yeah, what you mean by engineer wood?

SPEAKER_04 18:43

And yeah, yeah, I forgot we were on TV, which is what you told me to do. So great. Yeah, um, engineer wood is just um like uh a TGI floor system, basically. Um, and I'm gonna get in real trouble from their sales guy at Pro Spank because they should never call it a TGI. So I'd have to cut that part out. But um an I Joyce floor system basically, um, structural um components of a house. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:07

Yeah. So is it just the Joyce or would it be some beams as well?

SPEAKER_04 19:11

Like Yeah, the Joyce and the LVL beams, parallel beams, whatever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:15

Yeah. So you so that was like, hey, this is an idea here. How did that take shape? And you would have had to do some convincing of the powers of that be to be like, I want to work this into so at that point it was hey, like West Central, let's let's start stalking this.

SPEAKER_04 19:31

Yeah. Um and and they were like, Yeah, that sounds like a good idea, but they were also like, hey, we're getting older and we're not sure we want to like grow our business. Um, and so they kind of flipped it around and said, Why don't you start a business and stock it for us? Yeah, there was some space right behind their yard, and so they're like, Hey, why don't you do this? And I'm like, Really? I've never thought about owning a business, that seems crazy. And so I'm like, I'm not gonna do it on my own. So um basically I was driving to hockey with my partner now, Matt Vandergey, and I'm like, Hey, this is a crazy idea. You're in framing, you understand, like you know, you're you're better at working with your hands than I am. Um, would you ever be interested? And I I think it went back and forth, a few trips to hockey, and all of a sudden he's like, Yeah, let's do it. So um, that's why we started the business. So it was a push from the owners at the time, but then they spun it on us and said, Hey, why don't you guys do it instead? We're we're only gonna be doing this for 10 years. Yeah, I'd rather you guys do it and you can do it for 35. Why did you do that?

SPEAKER_02 20:31

That's why I started. So why did you know right away? Like, I love that it was like conversations on the way to hockey. Like one of the best things in life just happen when you just hang out with a friend or hang out with with some guys. Yeah, um, it's amazing what you can accomplish. Let's remember that, wives. Yeah, we need to. Let us play hockey. That and the golf course, solving the world's problems on the golf course. Yeah, yeah. There's been many a night doing that. Um, but how did you know, or why did you you're one of the first things you said was, well, they pushed me to do this, and I'm like, well, I've never thought of it, but I'm not doing that on my own. Yeah. Why'd you why'd you think that right away?

SPEAKER_04 21:04

I think maybe just knowing that like my like what I'm capable of, right? And I I said this earlier, and I probably didn't know at the time, but if I'm like to answer your question now, it's like I knew I could probably start it, but to maintain it and to to do that, like I just needed support there.

SPEAKER_03 21:20

And you could have employees, but if you have some with the buy-in to maintain it, like Matt, then you know that that that there's buy-in there and and he's gonna run it like say how you would want to, right? Yep.

SPEAKER_04 21:31

And if I'm being completely honest, we were like, what do we have to lose? Like, let's try this, like, big deal. We it fails, and we gotta start all over and find a job somewhere. Like, there's lots of jobs out there. So we didn't like we didn't really care too too much, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 21:43

But did your position when that was proposed to you, and you're like, okay, I'm gonna get into this engineered wood product, were you essentially giving up your sales job at West Central too, or was it was this supposed to be an and like yeah, it was it was eventually um had two pros spanned.

SPEAKER_04 22:00

But at the time, um, again, we it was new and we had Matt and we hired two other guys pretty quickly. Um, one guy in estimating and sales and design. So it was one role at the time, and then an operations guy that could actually cut the product and and ship it. Yeah. So we had three like young guys salaries that we had to pay for um with no sales. So yeah, at that time it was like, hey, let's keep Kent at West Central. He can sell through West Central because um, yeah, to back up a little bit, Pro Span is a distributor. Yeah, we sell two Lumberyards, and Lumberyards sell to the retail. So the more I could sell through West Central, the more Pro Span sold. Yeah, and that's that's kind of how that was.

SPEAKER_03 22:40

But at the end of the day, you saw the opportunity, ask the right questions, right? Because you could have you could have been like, you know, I'm still happy in my sales job here, but there's an opportunity, and I'm gonna ask questions. Yeah, you got the you got the answers you wanted, and then like how do I formulate this?

SPEAKER_04 22:55

Yeah, kind of. I wouldn't give you that much credit because it was just like it just kind of it happened quickly, and then next thing you know, we're starting a business, and we're like, well, what should our name be? And uh yeah, not Vandergee sat in the basement of my house, and and our wives um were there and we're throwing ideas out there, and and the original idea was Kema, K-E-M-A, because Kent and Matt, like the two initials in the city. Kema were like, uh, just that doesn't sound like the right name for like a Dutch company, right? So, anyways, we ended up with Pro Span.

SPEAKER_02 23:24

But yeah, was that one of your wives that came up with that, or was that you guys?

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Our wives. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:31

So it's getting what did you feel like this was a big risk? Like you kind of touched on that. What would what would have been the biggest risk? Just that you couldn't get the sales, you'd have to go back to just sales at West Central. Like, what was Matt doing at that time? Was it a big risk for him?

SPEAKER_04 23:48

Yeah, he um so I think he was financially in better shape than me. He had a business, I think, with his brother framing, and um, yeah, yeah, he was like yeah, but in the construction world, right? Yeah, yeah. Um, but he was taking a risk because he was walking away from something he was very good at. Yeah, he's like, and he's still a really good framer, right? So like he he took a risk. Um for me, um, yeah, it was it was it was a risk, but uh, I don't think I thought too too much about it.

SPEAKER_03 24:17

Yeah, yeah. So then did things kind of take off and you slowly transitioned out of West Central sales side to fully into Pro Span as that grew?

SPEAKER_04 24:26

Yeah, after uh after a year of selling through the old company there, I um I started working for Pro Span. Um, I got more into the sales at Pro Span, and Steve got uh he kind of pulled out of the sales side and went into the design side. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:41

Um was he always there?

SPEAKER_04 24:42

Yeah, right from the beginning. Him and um Matt Vanderhorst, yeah. Um they were right in the beginning, we brought them on and they became owners right away to you. So it was a group of four of us. Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:55

It's awesome. Yeah, all like similar age groups, probably similar values. So that must have been kind of fun just knowing you're all in it together.

SPEAKER_04 25:02

Exactly. And you kind of whatever it takes, kind of right. And and to your point, similar age group has been super nice because it's like we have 35 years together. Let's do this and let's question it. So that that helped.

SPEAKER_02 25:13

Yeah, it's you light a fire under each other and you can have some fun doing it too, right? Yeah. Did you um so you said it was about a year before you moved over? Was the big push, obviously, when you went over then would have been to get more lumber yards, right? And get your name out there.

SPEAKER_05 25:26

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 25:26

Because that's ultimately what the start of any business is gonna be like. People need to know about you. You guys might have the best product in the world, but if they don't know who you are, yeah, how are they gonna know to call you?

SPEAKER_04 25:34

Yeah, and that was a different sales approach, right? You're you're going to the lumberyard and you're trying to sell them on a package, right? So, and um, so it changed a little bit, and um, yeah, we had some success because there's like in the in the lumber world, there's the big, big lumber yards, there's the medium size and there's a small guys, and we kind of cater to the small and medium and wanted to make sure that we could like service them really well and put them in a position to compete with the big guys. So yeah, that's that's what we did.

SPEAKER_03 26:01

So when it comes to the product that you have, um the lumber yard has a employee or sorry, has a um client that comes in, says, I want this and I want it at this size, and then they're going to you because that's a big thing about what you guys do is cutting it to size, right? Storing it on your lot and then shipping it to site.

SPEAKER_04 26:21

Yeah, basically. Yeah, you you you basically design the floor system. Yeah, um, we have a program that um will do basically all the engineering for you, uh make sure it's a really solid floor, and then it'll pack uh it'll tell you what how to package it all, the lengths and the um the sizes, and then another big piece of the business is to store that material and then pull it package together and ship it out.

SPEAKER_03 26:45

Yeah. So initially, what was the land need um and and I guess uh office when you guys first started?

SPEAKER_04 26:52

Yeah, so you yeah, again, the big big part of the business would be storing the material and and having the material. So you gotta invest a bunch of money on inventory and then have the space to store it. And we're in downtown Langley, and we had I think two and a half acres behind West Central there. Yeah. So it was two and a half acres at the time. Yeah, and then a small little office. Yeah, small little mobile office, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:17

So what point and what caused this decision where you're like, hey, maybe we should instead of be renting, buy a place where we can uh take go or uh go about our business.

SPEAKER_04 27:30

I think uh I think through like a lot of our big business mentors, um, it was if you're gonna have a business, make sure you find a way to own the land. So Matt and I, and I think his dad and my dad, like very a lot of um a lot of push to whatever you do whatever it takes, similar to a single family home, to buy the land that your business is on. So that in 25, 30 years, at least you still have that. So the business is only worth um like kind of the people inside it, and and maybe whatever. You get a little bit for the business, but the land is what is gonna help you like grow your business, and at the end of the day, hopefully that's where your retirement comes from.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

Yeah, just a simple practical advice, right? And we we touched on it briefly actually with our our last guest too, just about a lot of people don't really want to make that jump because A, it's super risky uh because you don't know if your business is gonna grow, how much it's gonna grow, is it gonna shrink, what's the market gonna do? So to nail the right size of land or the right property is a risky decision to make, and there's a lot of moving parts moving an entire business. Yeah, it's not easy, it's not cheap.

SPEAKER_04 28:34

Yeah, I know. So we had this plan, we wanted to do it, and we we were trying our hardest to find a way to do it, but we didn't know where it was gonna be, how big it should be. And this is where I gotta apologize to Darren because I kind of put him through the ringer and we looked at a lot of properties. I enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_03 28:49

I I felt sometimes bad because it was hard to find. Yeah, like it was it to not pay too much, to get the right size, to get something that had a shop that was adequate, like, and and I think for a little bit we didn't you didn't know what would be the good fit, right?

SPEAKER_04 29:06

No idea, yeah. And and timing too, right? Like when's a good time in business to go out and do it. And it's like, and and I think like honestly, I joke about this, but every time I do a deal with Darren, it's we worked together for a long time, and then all of a sudden he he's gone, and it's like you get that like, oh man, we had such a close relationship for such a long time, and it's it's really cool. Yeah, but like I'm seriously, I'm calling this guy like often and just bouncing ideas off him, and he's probably like, Man, I'm trying to spend time with my family, right?

SPEAKER_03 29:32

So, like I enjoyed it all. Yeah, can't if there was uh like back in the day, there used to be with cell phones, your Faye Five, and that was like your free call to those Fae Five. Kent was on my Fay Five. There you go.

SPEAKER_04 29:42

Yeah, but regardless, like I think so. The property we found for the business um was um in Abbotsford, the original one, Pierre to Mill Road, and my partner Matt Mannergee found it, and it was just like it was it was a really cool property, but it also had a lot of upside because it was part of the OCP to rezone from residential to industrial, and we're like, hey, this is like a good fit because it's what we want, it's a little cheaper than the normal, like like what we um like to go out and buy regular industrial, right? So then it was like, hey, Darren, what do you think of this? And then Darren kind of got it going for us.

SPEAKER_03 30:16

Yeah, I think though it was those guys took it off the market, I think, and we kind of revived them, and it was like back and forth. We weren't sure if they were gonna be still selling, yeah. And then finally, yeah, we were able to pull the trigger. And I think there were we were worried that there were some environmental issues there, it was a bit of a so we figured that out, wasn't a big deal. Yeah, but six thousand square foot shop on 1.6 acres, I think. Yeah, the sumbo, right? Yeah, and so that's pro spend.

SPEAKER_04 30:42

No, that was actually that was actually FabTech.

SPEAKER_03 30:44

So um, so there, so what's the next side piece here? Or not side piece, it became pretty much maybe we should back up a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 30:51

And um, so we pro spend was in the single family and wanted really wanted to get into the multifamily. And and at that time, prefab walls and like wasn't a huge thing yet, but we're like, if we were to get into that condo market, we think that prefab walls is like important, yeah. And uh, and I think that a lot of that was Matt Vandergeg, too, with his frame experience. Like, if we're gonna do it, let's do it properly and start a prefab wall company at the same time, or like as a sister company, yeah. So we did that, we started FabTech, and that helped Pro Span get into the multifamily business. Gotcha. Right. Um, but so with when we started FabTech, that's when we saw the opportunity to take a lot of the money and equity we had built up in Pro Span to buy the land for FabTech. Yeah, so that that's how that went.

SPEAKER_02 31:40

Because with building walls for you know, commercial product, that's a ton of wood, yeah, a ton of storage. It's a whole different and a lot more employees all of a sudden.

SPEAKER_04 31:50

Yeah, that was that was eye-opening, right? Because we went from like managing like SKUs and shipping and land to people as well, and so there was a huge learning curve in business for us. Um, and again, we brought in some really key um guys to help us with that, and they're still with us, and we made them owners early on, and um, it's been really good.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

So you haven't been afraid to partner, you haven't been afraid to hire and you know give opportunity. And it sounds like for the most part, your core is all together, like there's good loyalty there. Am I right in saying that?

SPEAKER_04 32:25

Yep, no, we uh we've been very blessed to have good relationships and like work well together, so it's not without ups and downs. And even Matt and myself, like we we get along great, and we're two totally different people, and we've learned to really work well with each other. So, and I think that's a huge part of it. Yeah, sounds like someone else I know.

SPEAKER_03 32:43

Yeah, it's it's been fun watching you guys too. Like that site is like, okay, what are we gonna do? And you guys are like, Well, we gotta go find some saws. Yeah, and you guys are doing all this homework, and then it's like, and now we have to make sure that we're as efficient as possible, yeah, right. And you're working within that the bounds of that 6,000 square feet. So it's kind of fun to see you guys um figure that out kind of as you went, right?

SPEAKER_02 33:05

Was that was that the riskiest point of your business journey, you think? Like combining starting that business and buying the land, or I think so, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 33:13

Yeah, it's the numbers became real real pretty quickly, right? So we're like, okay, yeah, like you can always downsize your business, but as soon as you have land and like it's a big jump. So for sure.

SPEAKER_03 33:23

And you still you guys pretty quickly fully optimized that land, right?

SPEAKER_04 33:28

Yeah, we we outgrew that land pretty quickly. Um we were going through the rezone um process and we got it like 90% of the way, I think, maybe maybe 80%. Yeah, and then we sold it at that point. Yeah, and then uh and then we were on the horn with no, I was on the horn with Darren trying to find land for six months to a year, and then when we finally found it, so same thing, same process. Yeah, putting Darren through the ringer and like like let's find the right piece. And he found it. But I think and you did, I think credit you, I think you did find that one for us.

SPEAKER_03 33:58

Well, and I thought it was a little bit more to bite off than you guys could chew on to start, but we're like we looked at it and just made more and more sense, right? Um, because timing's tough too. You don't want to have to stop your business at one, right? And then move into the next one. So hopefully that was a bit of a smooth transition.

SPEAKER_04 34:13

Yeah, because I we were looking in Alder Roe Babbits for me. We wanted to be closer to Langley, right? And and so that's where our our focus was, and we could find some land with no building on it, and we're like, okay, well, then we need to put a building on, and then we got to start run a business while we're putting a building on. And then this property came up and it ended up being a lot cheaper for the land, and it had this massive building on it. So we got this massive shop, and we're like, ooh, seems way too big for us. And then I think you probably said, Oh, well, you'll grow into it. And you talk to a lot of people, and they're like, You buy a property or a shop, and it's always too small in five years or ten years. So um fortunately, we have lots of room to grow, and I think we've done that.

SPEAKER_02 34:49

You still feel that way now?

SPEAKER_04 34:51

Um, well, right now, yeah. Okay, yeah, okay. I mean, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:54

So you're not gonna call for to that besides again for a second.

SPEAKER_04 34:58

Maybe like Matt, my partner probably would. Like, he's always like, let's let's get a bigger shop and do this and do that. Like, he's like way more, he's got more ideas than I do in terms of that. So maybe one day we'll come and find another. But yeah, we'll see.

SPEAKER_03 35:12

I would also say going back to that property in Pierre and Ville, it wasn't cut and dried because it had an A1 zoning, and the guys that were what they were running out of there, yeah, they couldn't really. And when you guys started it, it wasn't rezoned yet, right? There's a bit of risk there too. Yeah, there was but it was just hard to find the ready, you know, rezoned land already ready to go. Like you guys took some risk there for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:33

Uh so how's how's being in Chilliwac now we've been there for a while? Like you said you were looking in Abbotsford and Langley, you guys made the ultimate decision to go to Chililac. Yeah, because that ended up being a pro or your business or a con that you just have to work out because the yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:47

I again we were nervous about moving away from you know where we started and our customer base and stuff. And I think our like our customers, it's been a really good transition, and and um that's that's been really good. The thing we didn't really think about is how most of our employees are from the east, or if they weren't at the time, they've moved out that way. And people are moving out the east anyway, and so now all these commutes like we just a lot of us have more time on our hands to to work, which is which is really cool.

SPEAKER_02 36:12

Yeah, so they probably love that too. No one likes fighting the highway traffic to go wherever they gotta go. So that's pretty awesome, actually.

SPEAKER_04 36:18

Yeah, so to answer your question, Chilliwack's awesome. I live out there and it's a quick commute. There's three or four different ways to get to work, and I never get stuck stuck in traffic.

SPEAKER_03 36:25

But it was a big hesitation. I remember it being a big head. So so shipping-wise, yeah, uh is that was that hesitation warranted, or have you been able to work around that?

SPEAKER_04 36:35

I I think we've been able to work around that.

SPEAKER_03 36:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So making that move, you guys went from 1.6 acres to over four acres and a six thousand square foot shop to I think a 50,000 square foot shop or close to yeah, it's like 40, yeah, like an acre basically. And did you guys make that move with the idea of kind of amalgamating the businesses together? Not amalgamating, like just the how yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:59

So we took, yeah, at the time, and these are completely separate businesses, and there's other partners in FabDeck and things like that. So we took Pro Span, we took FabDeck and put them all on one property. Yeah, and again, we didn't realize the efficiencies we could pick up by having two businesses that are closely related and how we can like like our design. So we're designing walls, we're designing floors, and it's all in one room, and we're um, and and the way the the world has changed, everything is bigger condos and collaboration, and it's worked out well to have those two groups in one office.

SPEAKER_02 37:30

Yeah, that's awesome to hear.

SPEAKER_04 37:31

And I and I say design, but it's also the finance team, it's the sales team, and um, yeah, it it was bumpy the first year, like to bring two cultures together and mesh it took a while, but um now it's it's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 37:45

And when when did you start pro spend? Do you remember the year?

SPEAKER_04 37:49

Uh yeah, I wrote it down. Uh 2017. So I think so.

SPEAKER_02 37:53

This journey that we're talking about, multiple properties, multiple businesses, going from no employees to being a sales guy to like, what am I gonna do? How are we gonna do this? To now multiple partners across multiple buildings and like sorry, across multiple businesses on a site that you own in a very short amount of time. So like that's it's like there's calmness to it, and there's also chaos to this, right?

SPEAKER_04 38:17

A little bit, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:18

Yeah, which is because FabTech's what, five or six years old? Like Pro Span.

SPEAKER_04 38:22

FabTech is uh four. We started FabTech 2021.

SPEAKER_02 38:25

Yeah. So it's almost in almost in 10 years. It's awesome to hear.

SPEAKER_04 38:29

Yeah, and again, I think you just don't know what you don't know, and you do it, and it's like, whoa. And and it to be to be completely honest, if you want me to be truthful, it's like the the nine years of Pro Span and for FabTech, it's been we've been blessed with just like growth in the economy and the market and things like that. And so I I like owning a business and being a part of a business is in my mind pretty easy to do and it's fun. You're bringing people on and you're at you're growing, and and it's like that's a I took a lot of enjoyment in that in the last year or two. It's it's it's flipped and the market's changed, and now it's like now you're really tested on like okay, what kind of moves are you gonna make? And and it's it's way it's actually harder to run a business now in in that way, right? You have to put more work into like okay, how are we gonna pivot? What are we gonna do? Um, and you're trying to stay ahead of a market that's changing.

SPEAKER_02 39:17

So yeah, so what I mean, let's just dive right into that. Like, you know, we see in real estate, like we I've said it for the last couple of years, like investor market is dead. Yeah, like it is just not there. And if they are, they're extremely picky or few, and that's so that's tied to also the guys investing in land, developing land, building buildings, building condoms, building houses. Yeah, you see custom homes going, but like even spec houses will slow down. A business like yours that builds the walls and the floors for all these. Yeah, how can you adapt, or what are you focused on doing?

SPEAKER_04 39:48

I think I think it's really efficiencies. Um, like we're okay to downsize if we have to, um, and and take less, like the pie is smaller, so we want to keep that piece of pie the same and just get really good at it and be more efficient. That's what like that's what we're focusing on, to be honest. To try to be lean, yeah. Like, so like yeah, we talk about how like the growth has been for the last 10 years and how quickly you go. I think you can do the same the other way too, and you can shrink fairly quickly if you if you are willing to and want to. Yeah, and I think right now in the market we're in, we're okay with that.

SPEAKER_02 40:19

Yeah, so yeah, you want to make sure what you're doing is at its very highest and best, right? Because you the uh the not there isn't the same amount of opportunity in the market. I mean, we've seen it in real estate too. It's there's a lot of people struggling. I think we're down 500 to 700 realtors in the last couple of years, like there's just less homes being sold. Yeah, and all of a sudden there's too many realtors doing it, right? Yeah, um, you know, and thankful, much like you guys, we we built up a business over the last 10 years that can sustain through some hard times, but still like it it makes you have to check yourself like what does your process look like? How can it be better?

SPEAKER_04 40:56

Totally. And what else can we do, right? And it and it it's it's funny. You end up you see yourself actually talking to everybody builders, developers, competition, like what are you guys doing? What are you focusing on, right? Because you just you almost like in the construction world, you have to kind of come together and figure it out and then and then work work from there and make decisions based on on those conversations.

SPEAKER_03 41:17

Yeah. Is there any pivot or anything that like through through all this homework where you're like, oh, this might be an opportunity? Or anything big where you're just like, oh, like that that was actually a big change that we made that just efficiency-wise?

SPEAKER_04 41:30

Um uh yeah, to answer, I don't really have an answer yet. No, yeah, nothing that comes to my head.

SPEAKER_03 41:36

Yeah, okay. So going back to nine years or or you know, four and nine years in, what is something you would tell young Kent when you're still young, but early Kent getting into uh pro span.

SPEAKER_04 41:49

Yeah. I think um another good question, Darren. I think it's it's for me is is like honing a craft, right? Like I look at my my partner, I said earlier, he's a really good framer, and it's like so. I had a lot of opportunities to do a job, but I never like got amazing at it. Yeah, and um, and I think I backing up, I wish I was like, hey, this is I was like, I'm really good at framing, and now I can use that in my business life, right?

SPEAKER_02 42:16

Yeah, so yeah, so maybe a little bit more like you said at the beginning, you know, ADHD and some things right bouncing around. I suffer from the same thing, yeah. Yeah, being able to master one thing before moving on to the next kind of thing. I think so, yeah. I've le I've learned the hard way for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What uh I got a couple questions for you, Todd, um, that I've been kind of writing down here. But would you say, like, I was gonna ask you what your biggest test was through rapid growth? And that's kind of what I was asking, you know, when you bought another company and then went from you know no employees to what whatever you guys did right away. But is would you say that was it, the growth, or would you say it's now that the market has changed?

SPEAKER_04 42:57

I would say it's now. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Trying to navigate the the changing economics and and yeah, it's you gotta look you gotta you gotta make sure those decisions you're making, um, like they they have big impacts on on the people that work for you, right? Your employees, your families, and um that's that's a tough one. Like it's easy to give someone a job, but to say, hey guys, we don't have enough work for you, that that's hard. Like I I feel that pain.

SPEAKER_03 43:22

And you went through nine years of like wins, right? Like it's growing, it's winning, it's yeah, now it's like that's gone, and it's like it's it's busy staying busy, yeah, and trying to optimize and and still trying to you know keep everybody happy, right?

SPEAKER_04 43:37

To different yeah, it's it's actually quite funny. So, like over the nine years, I think a lot of the older generation would see us doing business and the growth, and they're like, Hey, you guys be ready for the slowdown, be ready. And we're like, and we're like, Yeah, yeah, we know what you're talking about, but like, and then but you in the back of your mind, you're like, Oh, they're just like that's old school thinking. Yeah, and then you're and now you're living it, and it's like, oh no, it's not that old school, and it is harder. I thought it would be.

SPEAKER_02 44:00

So there's some realities there, right? Well, and so, and you guys also, you know, based on your own your own story here, you got a great culture. Like you've hired people and you've created a culture. Like, how what's been important to you in in building that? Like, how have you done that?

SPEAKER_04 44:17

Um, I think um, yeah, good question. We do have a great culture and and the guys that we surround ourselves with. Um, like right from the beginning, I said earlier, we brought two guys on early on, and and they're good character guys that like like the whole company kind of goes through the main guys, and then that gets um like it's passed on to every single employee. So um, but it but it means I think uh and I've I've seen this firsthand where the the bigger you grow, the more people you have, the harder it is for that ownership mentality to maintain that culture. So you have to find a way to like um how do you how do you say this? Um take that ownership mentality and pass it on to the managers, and the managers pass it on to their team, and and that's a hard thing to do, right?

SPEAKER_03 45:05

So you mentioned like honing in on a craft. A lot of what you've done, it sounds like has been kind of HR and putting people in the right spots and and the culture. Yeah. Um along the way, what did you guys go after some mentors or bring somebody in to help with the efficiency side of things? Um, like has there been learning there? Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_04 45:26

No, and I again leaning on whether it's like a fractional um COO or do you know mentors, like I said, the guys that um that had owned West Central at the time. Like I spend a ton of time just chatting with them, coffee over the phone, and and you know, my parents, my dad, my father-in-law, Matt, Matt's dad, and and and like those kind of people just like bouncing ideas off them. We spend a lot of time doing that.

SPEAKER_03 45:50

Sometimes not even realizing that you're learning in those, but then you look back and be like, oh, like if I I'm glad I have those conversations, and exactly.

SPEAKER_02 45:58

It's so much more than just you and Matt now, right? You got several partners throughout the businesses. Yep, yeah, and that's just grown each year. So that's so assuming that's more like you said, it's harder to get with more partners keeping the culture and all that. Um, you know, is is the goal what's what's the outlook? Like we've talked about how the markets like it's tough, it's a bit of survival, but what about the future? Are you looking to acquire more businesses and more partners? Like, do you still have that kind of hunt and kill attitude right now? Or are you just like batting down the hatches, efficiencies? We're like, what's your mindset right now?

SPEAKER_04 46:33

Yeah, um I think Matt says this all the time. If we're not growing, we're going backwards. So we're we're looking to grow, but we know that this isn't the time to do it. So we're looking for opportunities, but um yeah, right now it's more let's let's see, let's assume like let's assume the worst, and this is gonna be a two-year problem, and figure out how to just kind of kind of stay um equal level rather than growing or shrinking. So you're growing in market share.

SPEAKER_03 47:03

Like we have kind of sales sales were down 2025, our sales were up, so we gained in market share.

SPEAKER_04 47:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:11

Um, I mean, you always want to be growing, but if you look at it that way, yeah, you are still growing when it comes to market share. Yeah, right. So um, yeah, there's things happen in cycles.

SPEAKER_04 47:20

So this is it's lean right now, so it's but it's also like a huge opportunity for us to like we're spending more time taking courses, and and like we've got we've we've basically created positions for people that have no education, and like not always, but like even for myself, it's like well, let's go out and learn what it means to be a leader and and like like take little courses like Dale Carnegie, those kind of things. Like, I think that's we're spending more time doing that than we ever have because it's not like hair straight back, let's go.

SPEAKER_02 47:47

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, if you have time to reflect and improve that way. Yeah, do you find that it's been helpful for you? Like doing some of that stuff, or you'd rather learn on the go?

SPEAKER_04 47:56

Yeah, no, I yeah, I'm like I I've definitely I've learned a lot um doing that kind of thing. I haven't taken any courses recently, but more like just um like peer groups and and talking to mentors and stuff like that for sure.

SPEAKER_02 48:08

Yeah, having mentors in your life and also just the learning bleed from, and like you said, just good people surrounded by not only good mentors, but just being partners with good people that have ideas and are pulling on the road too. I think is so important in business. And something Darren and I have talked about, like we're we're opposites, um, but so many times in our business that's been such a benefit. Yeah, because the way we approach things differently. Yeah. Um, you know, and and you know, people always say, like, oh, I can never have a partner, I could never, you know, it's like it's not like you said, it's not always easy. And for Darren and I, it's not always easy, but the pros way outweigh the cons, I think, yeah, in partnership. If you can be with someone of, you know, like character at least, right?

SPEAKER_03 48:49

Yeah, a shared win, right? Um, like we even have that on our whole team. Someone else on the team does a deal, and we have a WhatsApp chat, and everybody's like, Yeah, nice work, shared win, right? Yeah, sales. Yeah, I mean, you guys get a new project, and it's like everybody's in on that, right? It's not just just one guy.

SPEAKER_04 49:06

So yeah. Um but like honestly, partnerships, I think is it's a lot of it is communication, right? You're going into a partnership. And I did a deal on a house once with with a friend of mine, and I was and people are like, Oh, be careful what you're doing. And I'm and I'm like, we just wrote out like worst case scenario, what can happen in these dates, and and like communicate and make sure you're on the same page before you get into it. Because I think a lot of people just let's be partners, and then things happen, and then like now what, right? And I think it's the opposite is like go go through the process before, find someone that is better at something than you are, right? Like find what you're shitty at, and then and then partner with that person, yeah, and then you can work together. And I think you guys probably found that. Matt and I have found that, and I think that's when a partnership works really well.

SPEAKER_03 49:50

Yeah, um through your through the years, like taking those risks. Was it easy to take those risks, or was that hard? Like having a partner like Matt and your other partners, like yeah, it was shared, like, okay guys, we're gonna do this, or was it was it like okay, we're gonna do this, and it's like uh I I like looking back, I think it was easy.

SPEAKER_04 50:10

I think it was like, like I said, you just didn't know what you were getting into. Yeah, um, it's getting harder now that I have a family, and you know, you just feel more responsible for people. Yeah, back then it's like I didn't have any responsibilities, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 50:24

So you you did the there was some youthful um energy in pursuing that, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:33

So looking back at it, um you know, I got a few more questions for you, but what's one of the things you're most proud of in your growth over the last?

SPEAKER_04 50:42

Yeah, yeah, in business, yeah. In business, I would I would just say I just love seeing guys grow in their position at work and be able to like make more money for their families and those kind of things. Like, I just love that. And it's like, hey, creating opportunities for people, that's that's where you get the most joy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:58

What about uh for you personally? For me personally, maybe with your with your family too tied to that. Like, what's been some of the you know, are there wins along the way that you've been able to celebrate with? Because you know, every time you're in a business, like you're kind of bringing your family along, yeah, with you in a way, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:16

Um, so what's the question though? So personally more.

SPEAKER_02 51:19

I I was thinking, yeah, I should be more clear. I was thinking more like for myself. I look at real estate and like what it's done for you know, my wife and kids and my family, like what would be something I'm proud of? I think one of the examples I think would be for myself would be that we went from you know almost being non-existent for a period of time at night, trying to hustle to actually like building the systems and processes to have success and also be around the family. Gotcha. Maybe one example is kind of what I was thinking.

SPEAKER_04 51:46

Yeah. I would say, like, for me, um having a little bit of flexibility and the willingness to just try things and and bring my family along. And I've got a super supportive wife who's like willing to try things just as much as me. And so it's it's kind of it's kind of cool because it's opened up doors and you know, we moved out of town for a little while, and we our family became really close because it was new to us and we had nobody else around us, right? But the I think the business and the attitude that we took into it has helped us become very close as a family. So that would that would be the win personally.

SPEAKER_03 52:20

So if you get to be the mentor now, what are you telling? Like it's we asked the question like nine years old, nine years ago, Kent. What what would you like to share with people that that you know could help them in their journey to own a business, to be an entrepreneur?

SPEAKER_04 52:35

Yeah, don't overthink it. It was really probably the biggest one, right? Like it's uh I think there's a commercial going on right now, and I I don't know if you have seen it. It's grandpa, this this girl wants to start a lawnmowering comp um company, and her grandpa has all this advice, and she's just like, and it's like there's never the right time to do something, and you're gonna overthink yourself into and sometimes you just gotta go and do it, and yeah, yeah, things will work out.

SPEAKER_02 52:59

I was having this conversation with someone today because they're they wanna like I always say like analysis paralysis, right? It's they they wanted to bring it back and bring it to the bigger body again and have a conversation again. And yeah, it's like at some points you gotta take a leap, like yeah, good or bad, at least you made the decision, right? And that's not to say you don't move forward without thinking, it's just like talk about the risks, talk about the pros, the cons. If it's good, like go. Yeah, yeah, stop not doing anything.

SPEAKER_04 53:29

It's true, yeah. But the flip side can be dangerous as well, right? And like, like you said, if you're not thinking about it at all, or if you don't have people in your in your life that can tell you, hey, think about this a little bit, then you can really mess it up.

SPEAKER_02 53:40

A partner to bring up a good idea, hey, think about this.

SPEAKER_03 53:42

Actually, no, I didn't at all. I was talking to somebody recently, a businessman who makes big decisions, and he's like, you know what? Like, we're actually very risk averse. We do all our homework in uh ahead of time, yeah, and and we don't like risk. Right. So a lot of it, what what might seem as risky just because it's going bigger and all that, as long as you've gone through the homework and you pencil it out, it doesn't mean it's more risky just because it's bigger. Yeah, right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:12

So did you have anything else that we missed or haven't touched on as far as your employees or your business that you specifically wanted to mention while you have the floor?

SPEAKER_04 54:24

Yeah, I don't know. I I didn't put a ton of thought into this. I think this is I just wanted to come here and just be as real as possible. Um hopefully I did that. Uh hopefully I wasn't too real. Um but is there something that I want to get out? I mean, not really. I think you know what we've been we've been blessed as a business um to be in a an economy that has been growing for for many years now, and um, and it's been a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_03 54:48

So yeah, one thing I've learned from Kent and how he goes about things, it's it's there's an idea, but how do I how do I get info on that idea? And it's asking the questions, it's it's turning over rocks, right? Like it doesn't stay at an idea with you. It's it's like let's pursue and get those questions. Yeah, so definitely learn that from you and and that's yeah, others should, if they have that idea, pursue it and and get all the information you can, right? And then that helps you in all your decision making.

SPEAKER_04 55:16

I'm glad I can teach you something, Darren. That's uh awesome.

SPEAKER_02 55:20

Yeah, it sounds like it uh and to me, if I'm gonna summarize a bit, like that my some of my takeaways for people is like you surround yourselves by the with the right people, right? It takes hard work, and that's something that you know we uh you haven't really said those words, but like anytime you're starting a business or anything, we know it takes a lot of hard work, and you and your partners have done that. You take a risk, you've you've worked hard, yeah, you've brought along your families, but you've also surrounded yourself with the right people. And I think that that's uh those are all just key things that are important at the beginning stages and then working through it together, right?

SPEAKER_04 55:51

Yeah, yeah. It's actually really cool to summarize it like that, and you don't really sit back and think about that too often, but that that that was a really good summary.

SPEAKER_03 55:58

Yeah, yeah. And just going and walk into your business and going into your office and seeing what you guys have built. It's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02 56:03

Yeah, so and hang on to the culture too, because like even as as much as different as real estate business is from what we do to what you guys do, like we're proud of our culture. Like, we've had very little turnover of realtors, we've had very little drama, yeah. And that's something that we're very proud of running running a team, right? And I think to hear your story too, and the people that you've hired that have stuck with you, that's something to be proud of and to celebrate too, yeah, and to continue to pursue, right?

SPEAKER_03 56:30

For sure.

SPEAKER_02 56:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:32

Do we want to do a quick lightning round? Yeah, we got some lightning round.

SPEAKER_02 56:35

Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna end on a bit of a later note. We're gonna Kent does know this is happening, but he doesn't know every question we're gonna ask. But we're gonna ask some questions as soon as you think of an answer, just spout it off. There's no right or wrong. Maybe we'll just bounce back and forth here. Darren, you want to do that?

SPEAKER_03 56:51

No, you take you take the questions. Okay, they have the questions. I'll uh make a comment if I think of something funny.

SPEAKER_02 56:57

All right, Kent.

SPEAKER_04 56:58

What was the favorite job you ever did? Favorite job? Uh, when I was framing um throwing trusses up on a chicken barn with six or seven other guys, and like not very safe what we're doing, but just so much fun. And then at the end of the day, going home and be like, whoa, we put whatever, two, three hundred feet of trusses up. That was awesome. In progress. Yeah, that was so cool. So not scared of heights.

SPEAKER_01 57:18

No, I am now, but back then, not at now. As soon as you have kids and you have to worry about it, yeah. Totally. Yeah, yeah. Probably don't want to see what you were walking on all those days.

SPEAKER_04 57:28

Yeah. Uh, what was the worst job you ever did? Oh, I think we talked about it early on, mechanics and trying to like work in like with dirty oil and and fix things. That's not my thing. Yeah, so wood over metal. Yes, 100%.

SPEAKER_01 57:41

Yeah, metal is is bad.

SPEAKER_02 57:43

Yeah, so maybe that shaped you. You ran so far away from cars, you got in the wood business and never looked back.

SPEAKER_04 57:48

Yeah. Um, coffee or beer? Ooh. Uh, coffee in the morning. I need my coffee in the morning, but beer after hockey for sure. Good answer. Early mornings or late nights? Early mornings.

SPEAKER_01 58:01

I get grumpy late at night. Ask my family.

SPEAKER_02 58:05

All right. What's uh what's the biggest pet peeve that you would have on a job site?

SPEAKER_04 58:11

Uh just inefficiencies and like garbage everywhere and stuff like that. Drives me nuts. I'd be always I'd always be sweeping while I was framing my boss. I was like, what are you doing? Start building something and I'm I'm cleaning, right? Yeah, it's nice. This is gonna help us later.

SPEAKER_02 58:23

You just don't see it yet, right? Um what's something that you do now for fun?

SPEAKER_04 58:28

What do I do for fun? Uh right now with family, like farming is my my kind of my my passion in in the background. So what are we farming? Farming uh cows, we've got uh chickens, we've got a couple of goats, some beautiful property, yeah, living that yarrow life.

SPEAKER_02 58:45

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's just so calming, right? Just yeah, yeah. Yeah, slower pace, which is something that I don't know, I don't know. I even for me, like I live in Euro too. My wife's like say it slowed me down on the home front. I don't have as many animals as you. We've got a few, and I'm as I get older and as business gets crazier, you kind of almost enjoy that even more. I don't know if you feel that way, but I do.

SPEAKER_04 59:07

I mean, and this is pretty new to me, and I've got six cows now, and it's always work. There's always work to be done, so it can be stressful. But like when you're just out there feeding your cows after a long day, like that's a it's a fun feeling.

SPEAKER_01 59:19

Just say, yeah, it's awesome. Uh, what is a go-to fast food order? Go-to fast, uh like a sushi is my quick fast, like fast enough. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not a huge fast food. Like sushi. Yeah. What's uh what's a hidden talent people don't know about you? Uh I can lick my elbow. We won't make them do it. I'm gonna try that later. There's no way I can. There's no way. Um who's your favorite video cut? We're gonna get it. What's a favorite athlete growing up? Oh, Sidney Crosby. Born in 1987, number 87. That's the year I was born.

SPEAKER_02 59:55

So and you're still playing hockey too? Yeah, I try. Look at that, eh? Um, what is your most irrational fear? Irrational fear.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:04

Uh I I'm scared of being surrender wrapped to a pole. I'm not sure I want that in the public, but it's my fear. Is there uh do you want to share anything that you have to do? I feel like my brother and his friends used to always do that kind of thing to me, and I at his wedding I surrender wrapped him to a pole, so I think there's payback coming one day.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:23

Hopefully, no enemies are watching this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:26

No doubt. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:27

Um okay, and my last question for you, um, a little bit more on a serious note. Um, you know, when people hear your story today, uh, whether that's someone starting a business or someone that you know, uh, what's something that you hope they take away from it? After watching this? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:46

Um I think I think just being humble with what comes before you and just be you know willing to try things and uh don't do it, don't do it for the wrong reasons. Don't do it for the money, do it for for the rest of it, and and then you'll have success.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:04

Love it.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:05

It's a great way to sum it up.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:07

Thanks. Do you have anything you want to add, Darren?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:09

Or no? That's great. I want to end on that note. Okay, thanks, Kent. Really appreciate that.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:13

Yeah, huge thanks to Kent for coming out. Um, that's FabTech and Pro Span. Uh, if you're in the business and need your pre-fab walls, floors, whatever else, I'm sure there's way more to it. But look them up. Uh, it's a great local company. Um, also a great client of ours, especially Darren here. So thanks for your time. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you, Matt. We appreciate you for having me. Yeah, thank you. I was thinking of it. So very good.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:43

Thanks for watching and listening. We'll see you guys next time.